Archive for Jesper Fast

In case you missed it, Jesper Fast is currently skating in a non-contact jersey at practice. While there is no timetable for his return, it is always promising to see someone with a knee injury skating again. Eventually he will return to the lineup, and at that point, the Rangers will have a bunch of lineup questions that will need to be answered.

Do you break up Hagelin-Hayes-Miller?

Prior to his injury, Fast was skating with Carl Hagelin and Kevin Hayes. The line was solid, albeit unspectacular. When Fast went down on February 8, J.T. Miller took his spot on that line, playing the off-wing, and the results have been fantastic. In those seven games, Hayes has a line of 4-2-6. Hagelin has a line of 3-3-6, and now has his first career 20-goal season in his sights. Miller has a line of 0-3-3, but has been willing to go to the corners, be in hard on the forecheck, and has been averaging close to 60% SAT%/CF%.

For the first time all season, the Rangers have a third line that is a legitimate scoring threat. This line took over the secondary scoring role when the Chris Kreider-Derek Stepan-Martin-St. Louis line was slumping. Now the line provides tertiary scoring, with Hayes and Miller playing on PP2.

Share this:

An update on the Jesper Fast injury has come in, courtesy of Andrew Gross, and it is not that good. Fast will be out 2-3 weeks with a first degree knee sprain. The rookie winger was hitting his stride with the Rangers, rotating between third and fourth line RW duties and playing a critical role on the penalty kill. Fast left the game against Nashville with the injury in the third period.

No matter who the Rangers are linked to, they will need to identify the tradeable assets within the organization. That’s not an easy feat, as the salary cap looms, and the Canadian Dollar, which was supposed to be around .85 USD, is tanking hard to around .60. Acquiring someone with a large cap hit into next season isn’t doable unless salary goes the other way.

Continuing on with the mid-season report card, this is my take on the Rangers bottom six forwards. Dave covered the goaltending and coaches and Chris wrote about the top-six forwards previously, so be sure to check them out.

Hagelin’s speed keeps opposing teams honest. He’s been very reliable defensively, a dangerous part of the penalty kill and has big playmaking potential 5v5 on the offensive side of things. Keep your eye on his name in trade rumors. He’s a free agent at the end of the year and with cap space tight after Marc Staal’s extension he could be a cap casualty. Hagelin has been a big part of the bottom six and will continue to be moving into the 2nd half of the season.

Share this:

In case you missed it, the New York Rangers have won three in a row and 11 of their last 12 games. I feel like no one missed that. What you may have missed is that the Rangers are 17-5-2 with Jesper Fast in the lineup, including 11 straight wins. I’m not usually one to bank on the performance of a team based on the presence of one kid in the lineup, but it’s certainly something looking into.

Fast’s #fancystats aren’t among the league’s best, but he’s certainly no slouch. Primarily deployed in the defensive zone (35.6% OZ starts), Fast’s CF sits at 45.7% (-4.8% relative). That has been a steady increase in effectiveness, as before the winning streak Fast was around 40% CF and -7.0% relative. Fast isn’t paid to put the puck in the net, but he’s put up a respectable 3-3-6, with 1-1-2 coming in this 11 game streak.

All told, Fast’s ability to drive puck possession has been trending upward (rolling five-game average). It’s not perfect, but considering his deployment and solid positioning/play in the defensive zone, you take it. He’s a defense-first forward, so his trend upward in CF is generally related to suppressing shot attempts.

Because of Fast’s deployment, you expect him to suppress shot attempts, both quantity and quality, and he’s been doing just that (CA/60 at 50.0, 6th among forwards). All forwards ahead of Fast –except for Dominic Moore– have significantly higher offensive zone starts.

His hextally, identifying shot locations against with him on the ice, is pretty impressive:

To read this chart you want blue circles in high risk areas, which is what Fast has been able to suppress. He’s doing a better job, comparatively to league average, of suppressing quality shots in the slot. He limits shots to the outside.

Put this all together, and you have a defensively sound player that limits both quantity and quality shot attempts from the opposition. It’s really all you can ask for given his deployment and the relative faith that Alain Vigneault is starting to show in the kid. While the record with Fast in the lineup is not caused directly by Fast, he has certainly been a positive contributing factor to the recent run.

Share this:

What a difference a week makes. The Rangers went to Western Canada unsure of themselves and came back on a roll, with a double header against a weak opponent on tap. It’s the festive season and the Rangers can really make some ground up to close out the year. A week to go before Christmas, let’s muse.

The cliché was always that power forwards take several years to maximise their potential. Could it really be that Rick Nash has only just begun to fulfil his potential? Yes he has been an elite power forward for several years and a consistent goal scorer but it’s a fair argument that he’s never maxed his undoubted skill set and upside. Until now.

Nash is definitely having the best patch of his career. Consistent, a beast at both ends all the while he’s finishing at an unprecedented rate. He’s a game changing force every single game. It’s early, but people have started to whisper the words Hart Trophy candidate with regard to Nash. Absolutely deserves to be in the mix.

Should we be worried about Dan Boyle? Or glad that he’s a sort of afterthought because of the improved play of the Rangers ‘big three’ on the blueline?

Jesper Fast has been a bit of a hot topic for the New York Rangers this season. After breaking camp with the pro club for the second season in a row, Fast was again demoted before the month of November. Unlike last season, Fast’s stay in Hartford was temporary, as he was recalled three weeks later, and has stuck with the team since.

Fast was held off the score sheet for the first five games following his recall, but has put up 2-2-4 in the seven games following. All told, he has four points in 14 games while getting absolutely crushed with defensive zone starts (most DZ starts on the team) on the fourth line.

Alain Vigneault has said many times that he trusts “Quickie” in all aspects of the game. But over the past few games –looking at the great shift charts available at war-on-ice, we can see that’s not entirely accurate.

Malone was waived earlier this month, cleared, but hung around with the club for a few days before this demotion. Allen didn’t look out of place, but the returning John Moore meant it was between him and Matt Hunwick. That move I don’t necessarily agree with, there was no harm in seeing what else Allen had. He had been better than both Hunwick and Mike Kostka. But hey, I’m a blogger.

When the Rangers get healthy in a couple of weeks their line-up will be set – barring a fresh injury or a dramatic loss of form. The Rangers will be dressing a veteran heavy line-up even though several regulars are still in the young category.

Meanwhile down in the AHL, the Hartford WolfPack has started the season strongly (7-2-1 as of Wednesday) and are being led offensively by a handful of prospects. Among others, Oscar Lindberg, Ryan Haggerty, Danny Kristo, J.T. Miller, Mat BodieandJesper Fast are all having productive seasons offensively. Including Haggerty (in his rookie pro season but still with six points in ten games) all of the above are playing consistent hockey and are close to a point per game.

This kind of collective form offers an organisation exactly the kind of problems they want. On the one hand the Rangers don’t have any space for prospects in New York – certainly not in positions where enough ice time is available – but on the other hand they want a steady stream of players knocking on the door putting pressure on the established core. However, a problem starting to develop in the Rangers organization is that several prospects may see their paths blocked in both the short and long term.

Forget Mike Kostka. The one-game experiment with the 28-year-old defender notwithstanding, the Rangers’ depth has been extremely impressive so far this season.

Derek Stepan and Dan Boyle are two enormous losses that most teams wouldn’t be able to withstand, but New York has weathered the storm remarkably well through seven games.

It hasn’t been easy.

Poor planning down the middle during the summer forced first Martin St. Louis and now Kevin Hayes into unnatural positions, but both players have done well learning on the fly. The center problem has been felt most at the faceoff dots, but that’s never been Stepan’s hallmark anyway. And though Stepan’s myriad of contributions obviously can’t be replaced, the absence of the No. 1 center has done nothing to affect the team’s primary scorers on the wing. Rick Nash is off to an unreal start, and rotating top-liners St. Louis and Chris Kreider have found the scoresheet early and often even without No. 21. Stepan has been missed more in the defensive end, but the entire team has been awful in its own zone thus far, so the subs would be hard to fault for that.